On 16th August 1875, a eccentric 50-year-old bachelor travelled from his home in Devon to Yeovil, booking into the Three Choughs Hotel in Hendford.

Before long, he begins to make wild accusations that people were plotting against him and by the early hours of the morning he was dead.

The man's death soon became a celebrity scandal when it was revealed that Henry Tuberville had been born Henry Blackmore and was the brother of Lorna Doone author Richard Blackmore.

Henry was seen as rather eccentric. He changed his surname as the result of a grievous wrong he considered that members of his family had done to him.

Reports of Mr Tuberville's death

Like his better known younger brother, Henry had inherited various legacies from relatives and amassed around £20,000 - the equivalent of more than £1.5M today.

Throughout his life, he had written a number of wills, one in 1858 in which left his entire estate to Henry Essery, a Devon shoemaker. A second will left his entire estate to pay for a statue to William Shakespeare, while a third will left his estate of £20,000 to Charles Bradlaugh, a free-thinker and militant politician.

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In 1875, when he was 51, Henry Turberville began to visit Yeovil where he got to know Thomas Maggs, a chemist who owned a shop in the High Street. In July that year, he wrote yet another will, leaving everything to Thomas Maggs and his family.

That fateful night in Yeovil, Tuberville had returned to his room in the Three Choughs Hotel complaining of being in great pain.

As he was a chemist, Thomas Maggs was called in and administered various remedies but Henry grew worse and declared that he was the victim of poisoners.